Man Kills Family Dog, Wins Back Estranged Wife And Child

A perseverant 36 year-old Walter Flaherty is back at home with his wife and baby child this week after killing the family pet, a four-year-old Boston Terrier named Snickers. The reconciliation culminates a rocky six-month estrangement since the unemployed alcoholic was most recently evicted from the house.

According Janine Flaherty, the murder of Snickers, whom her husband shot to death and left stuffed in the mailbox last Monday, persuaded her to give her husband of eight years yet another chance where dozens of other less endearing gestures failed.

“I kicked Walter out in April at gunpoint after he went too far and broke a chair over my mom’s back for using his cigarette lighter, and since then his attempts to coax me into letting him back have fallen well short. In fact, his slashing my tires, sitting in his car outside the house all night screaming ‘You bitch this’ and ‘You bitch that’ and getting me fired from my job by calling my boss everyday telling him how big a slut I am probably only hurt his chances. I’ll admit I was a little moved when he threw a whiskey bottle through the front window, but his killing Snickers really showed me something. I think he really liked that dog,” remarked Mrs. Flaherty.

Less enthusiastic about Flaherty’s return are their neighbors and the local police department.

“Am I happy that drunken son-of-a-bitch is back? I suppose if I were the type of person who looked forward to trying to sleep through an unholy commotion of shattering glass, spine chilling shrieking, screamed threats of manual decapitation and gunfire almost always followed eventually by the nauseating grunting sounds of rutting hippopotamus emanating from the house next door on a nightly basis I would be, but really I’m not so much happy about it, no,” said one anonymous neighbor.

Commented Police Sargent John Ramsey: “Walter Flaherty is pure white trash. I can’t say how many man hours we’ve wasted serving complaints at that house only to be rebuffed every time by that idiot wife of his saying it was accident, that she tripped and fell threw a plate glass window or face first over a can of spaghetti-os, but one of these days we’re gonna have to take him down in a hail of bullets, and I hope it happens on my shift.”

Regardless of the opinion of naysayers, Walter and Janine Flaherty report that they’re happy to be reunited and are looking forward to a long lifetime of marital harmony.